About me

My name is Nathan Turnbough, and I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville. Like most past and present students in the Echternacht lab, my research involves lizards in the genus Anolis. I have primarily focused on the downstream food web effects of an invasive anole (Anolis sagrei) in Florida and whether they are functionally equivalent to the effects of displaced, native anoles (A. carolinensis). The question of functional equivalence is multi-faceted; I used a series of small islands dominated by either the native or invading species to investigate overall, population-level food web equivalence, and assessed individual-level equivalence in food web interaction rates using controlled enclosure experiments. In addition to helping us understand the impacts of a particular, widespread invasive species in Florida, these studies address the broader issue of how communities can be affected by invasive species that displace ecologically similar native species.

This website is still a work in progress. I will develop it further as time permits. Eventually I will post more details about my research, publications, teaching, talks, etc.